In what is becoming pure Ron Francis’ form, today, on Friday around or after dinner time when most people are heading into the weekend, the Carolina Hurricanes made a big announcement. The team signed recently-acquired Scott Darling to a 4-year contract at $4.15 million per season. With the move, the Hurricanes have moved aggressively and early to add one of the best goalies available this summer. And in the process, the move addresses the Hurricanes biggest offseason need on May 5, a full 5 months before the start of the 2017-18 season. As I said on Twitter, there is still work for Francis to do this summer, but acquiring and signing Scott Darling fills the biggest need and very clearly shifts Ron Francis from opportunistically building for some undefined time in the future to playing to win now. And that my Hurricanes friends is an incredibly good thing! Scott Darling catch up I covered most of the angles on Scott Darling when he was acquired from the Chicago Blackhawks for a third-round pick almost exactly one week ago. My first impressions article profiled Scott Darling and discussed a couple interesting angles on the trade itself. I followed up with a part two on the Scott Darling trade that considered flight risk, looked at the broader Hurricanes goalie situation that now includes three goalies and came pretty darn close guessing his contract at either three or four years at $4 million per season. Along the way, the Sunday Canes Chronicle offered four external articles on Scott Darling and the Monday Coffee Shop polls and discussion questions were also dedicated...

About an hour after the Hurricanes acquired Scott Darling from the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday, I posted my initial thoughts on the deal. After some time to digest the deal, I stand by my original comments which you can find HERE. The Sunday Canes Chronicle included four external articles that detail his path to the NHL and ultimately the Hurricanes. The Monday Coffee Shop offers read polls and discussion questions on the Scott Darling trade, prospects of signing him and the related path forward. Here are some additional thoughts on Scott Darling and the transaction in total. Francis’ transition from opportunistic to focused The vast majority of the analysis (including mine) of the trade for Scott Darling will focus on Darling himself and the contract situation. A subtle but significant underlying story is Francis’ shift. In the past two summers, Francis has opportunistically shopped to find deals with value. The Versteeg deal netted two NHLers for very little capitalizing on Chicago’s salary cap situation. The Teravainen/Bickell deal was the same. And signing Lee Stempniak and Viktor Stalberg as value free agents followed the same strategy. Spending a draft pick for a non-guaranteed addition is a somewhat more aggressive move to fill a very targeted need with one of the higher-end options available on the market. If he can get Darling under contract, he will have filled one of the team’s two biggest needs very early in the offseason and not spent too much in terms of futures/trade assets to do it. That will set the stage for trying to do one more big deal to add a top-end...

Will write up in more detail in next few days, but here are my first impressions of the Hurricanes acquiring goalie Scott Darling. Like Ron Francis seems to like to do it, just when people were settling into their lazy chairs for after dinner cocktails on a Friday evening, he dropped an unpredictable trade bomb out of the blue. After the Kris Versteeg deal went down at a similar time, I picture Francis and Blackhawks’ general manager Stan Bowman having a standing Friday cocktail hour phone chat while sitting on their back decks every Friday. Most weeks they just talk about golf, fishing, professional sports or whatever. But every once in awhile they do a deal instead. Just after 7:30pm on Friday, Twitter went aflitter with the announcement that the Carolina Hurricanes had acquired Scott Darling from the Chicago Blackhawks for the Ottawa Senators 2017 third round draft pick they had acquired in the Viktor Stalberg trade. Scott Darling is scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, so technically the Hurricanes acquired the right to negotiate exclusively with him through the end of June with no guarantee that he will actually suit up for the Hurricanes in October. Scott Darling profile Darling is a goalie from the current trend of ‘bigger is better.’ At 6 foot 6 inches tall and 232 pounds, Darling is very much in the Ben Bishop range for size. As a 28-year old who only has only three years of NHL experience and 64 starts to his credit, he is the stereotypical late bloomer that is common for the goalie...